Quotes of the day

posted at 8:41 pm on September 6, 2013 by Allahpundit

If Congress votes this down and he does it anyway, don’t you think an impeachment move in the House is certain?

Howard, I am not going to speculate about it because I hope Congress will exercise its best judgment to prevent the worst elements in Syria from even growing stronger. I hope the Congress will decide not to let Assad believe he has impunity in the use of these weapons. I hope the Congress will believe that upholding the credibility of our nation in the conduct of foreign affairs is important. I hope the Congress believes that this is a message that Iran needs to understand as they proceed, conceivably, to be developing nuclear weapons. I hope that they will also agree to uphold it with respect to others in the world, like Kim Jong Un in North Korea, who needs to know that America stands by its word. And for all the people in the world who depend on America as a reliable partner, this is a critical message. I hope Congress will recognize that the plan is appropriately and unbelievably limited and tailored in its scope so that it is not going to war — it is a limited action to uphold the importance of degrading his capacity to use chemical weapons.

***

Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), the third-ranking member of the Senate Democratic leadership, announced Friday he will support a resolution authorizing military strikes against Syria…

Schumer announced his support two days after his colleague in the leadership, Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.), voted for the measure during the Foreign Relations markup.

Obama has gotten support from some former Bush officials, including former defense secretary Robert Gates, who also served Obama. Gates told Politico that he strongly urges Congress “to approve the president’s request for authorization to use force in Syria.”

And Stephen Hadley, Bush’s former national security adviser, told Bloomberg TV’s “Political Capital With Al Hunt” in an interview that will air Sunday that Republicans should endorse Obama’s use-of-force resolution even if they disagree with his foreign policy.

A limited military strike may be symbolic. But for Congress to block that strike would be more than symbolic. It would undermine a tangible element of American influence: the perception that the commander in chief is fully in command.

The refusal to authorize force would be taken as an ideological pivot point. Nations such as China, Russia and Iran would see this as the triumph of a political coalition between the peace party of the left and the rising isolationists of the right. And they would be correct. The strategic calculations of every American enemy and friend would be adjusted in ways that encourage challenge and instability. Prime Minister David Cameron’s recent loss of the vote authorizing military action — the first such repudiation since 1782 — has weakened Britain as an actor in the world. America should refuse to follow it down.

I would prefer to defend a form of internationalism less conflicted and hesitant than President Obama’s. But even so, it is better than the alternative of seriously compromising the credibility of the presidency itself. And those who claim that this credibility has already reached bottom are lacking in imagination.

***

Admittedly, it would have been much better to start arming and building up the moderate opposition two years ago. But we have no choice but to try now, otherwise the victor is either going to be the Iran-Hezbollah-Assad axis or al-Qaeda and its ilk. Neither one speaks for the majority of Syrians and there is still an opportunity–albeit an opportunity much smaller today than two years ago–to buttress the more moderate factions of the Free Syrian Army. But in order to do that the Obama administration will have to provide heavier weapons to vetted rebel factions, especially anti-tank missiles that can stop Assad’s armored vehicles.

The rebels also require anti-aircraft missiles to shoot down Assad’s aircraft. The administration is on more solid ground in refusing to grant this weapons request because of the danger that portable anti-aircraft systems such as the Stinger could fall into the wrong hands and wind up being used against civil aviation. As I have been arguing for a while, instead of providing anti-aircraft missiles to the rebels, the U.S. and its allies should simply use their air and naval forces to ground Assad’s aircraft. That could be achieved from stand-off range by cratering runways and blowing up aircraft on the ground. It would be achieved even more surely by imposing a no-fly zone backed up by airstrikes; Assad’s anemic air defenses, weakened by defections and two years of fighting, would be no match for an American-led air assault…

The alternative–of not granting the administration authorization to act–is too dangerous to contemplate: It would be a green light to WMD proliferators from North Korea to Iran who will now know that the U.S. will do nothing to stop them. Thus, congressional skeptics have no choice but to hold their noses and vote “aye,” all the while hoping that the administration’s use of force will be less anemic than widely advertised.

***

2. What kind of world we want to live in. The abolition of all dangerous tyrants and oppressive regimes is, of course, a silly dream. But the idea of moving toward a world with fewer and fewer of them is completely possible. In fact, it’s been happening ever since the U.S. took the lead in ensuring global security after WWII. The world is a freer place than it was and this is not only good in the moral sense. It is also good because free countries are less likely to go to war with one another and more likely to trade with one another.

The problem is this doesn’t happen on its own. Peace doesn’t keep itself, as some have put it. Although there are many downsides to America’s policing the world, a) the benefit of a more peaceful order is invaluable and b) the U.S. is the only country that can do it. Without American intervention, imperfect as it is, for humanitarian (and pragmatic) reasons, a power vacuum emerges and the global order spirals out of control. That’s how we got into the current crisis to begin with. Many of the sinister developments mentioned in the first point might have been prevented or curbed if we had spent the last five years continuing to act as the strong and self-assured defender of a (relatively) free and peaceful global order. Staying away creates chaos. This very chaos, if left to grow, will manifest on a larger scale and ultimately cause us great harm—even, perhaps, on our own soil. Rising bad actors like to challenge America to affirm that their rise is real, official, and inevitable.

***

[W]ho could benefit from the U.S. not taking action here? Assad, the dictator with the blood of 100,000 on his hands. Iran, one of the world’s most reactionary regimes. Hezbollah, a terrorist force that crushes the democratic aspirations of the Lebanese people. And al Qaeda, the extremist fanatics behind 9/11. Are those the kinds of people liberals want to help? I’m sure liberal members of Congress who’ve announced they’re voting no—Raúl Grijalva, Alan Grayson, Charlie Rangel, Barbara Lee, and about 17 others—have spent a heck of a lot of time thinking about what could go wrong if we do strike. I bet they haven’t given a moment’s thought to what could go wrong if we don’t.

I say that’s worth thinking about. Also worth thinking about is the fact that many liberal-minded people from the region, and certainly many or virtually all of the nonextremist rebels, want the United States to act. From their point of view, without the United States’ engagement, the region is buried in slaughter, theocracy, and darkness. I would expect American liberals at least to stop and think about that.

Again, no one is talking about 130,000 ground troops. That was a qualitatively different thing, and I opposed it from the start. Yes, an American attack might escalate matters. But it also might not. We got in and out of Libya. It’s not clear what that one accomplished yet, although we did presumably prevent a slaughter of many thousands in Benghazi. It is clear what we accomplished in Kosovo, where another murderer was removed from office and hauled to the Hague (without one American life lost). So it doesn’t always end badly. And it isn’t always immoral. This is one of those cases where, if the scale of the action is appropriate and if it works, a military incursion can actually serve liberal ends. No, that’s not for sure. But it is for sure that doing nothing helps the reactionaries.

***

The fact is that Obama is the only president we have. We can’t abdicate our position in the world for the next three years. So Republicans will have to resist the temptation to weaken him when the cost is weakening the country. A party that for at least two generations has held high the banner of American leadership and strength should not cast a vote that obviously risks a damaging erosion of this country’s stature and credibility abroad…

A Yes vote is in fact the easy vote. It’s actually close to risk-free. After all, it’s President Obama who is seeking the authorization to use force and who will order and preside over the use of force. It’s fundamentally his policy. Lots of Democrats voted in 2002 to authorize the Iraq war. When that war ran into trouble, it was President Bush and Republicans who paid the price. If the Syria effort goes badly, the public will blame President Obama, who dithered for two years, and who seems inclined to a halfhearted execution of any military campaign. If it goes well, Republicans can take credit for pushing him to act decisively, and for casting a tough vote supporting him when he asked for authorization to act…

A Yes vote seems to be statesmanlike. (Actually, it happens also to be statesmanlike, but we’re now talking politics.) Establishment foreign policy voices, including conservative ones, may not move voters—but they do have some pull in the media and with influentials across the country. Casting a “tough” political vote is a way for members of Congress to appear to be rising above mere party politics. In fact, many voters do like to think they’re voting for someone who has at least a touch of statesmanship, and so casting what appears superficially to be a politically perilous vote could well help the stature of Republicans with many of their constituents back home.

It’s true that a Yes vote will be temporarily unpopular with the base. To support Obama now may seem to invite primary opposition from challengers who would be more in tune with popular sentiment to stay out of the Syrian civil war. For a few weeks after the vote, Republicans will hear such rumblings. But at the end of the day, Republican primary voters are a pretty hawkish bunch.

***

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., also said Congress is not likely to authorize a strike, predicting a close vote in the Senate where the resolution is likely to come up next week and a larger margin in the House where the timing is less certain.

“God has blessed us,” he said Thursday. “It is inconvenient, it is hard, it is complicated, and it can be wearying. But there is no substitute for American leadership.”…

He told chamber members he doesn’t know why leaders such as Adolf Hitler or Osama bin Laden embrace extreme ideology.

Blowback

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Very much so. So were most of the other wars with the problem being that we refused to finish them off correctly – with unconditional surrenders.

America certainly benefitted greatly from having fought and won WWII the way we did. At the very least, that was the reason that we emerged as the sole nuclear power on Earth. Had we not fought and that title went to someone else I don’t think you can even imagine the difference the 20th centruy would have seen. And that is in addition to what would have developed had we not been forced in by Pearl Harbor and the Nazis and Japs had won.

Yes, FDR was a turd and many in his administration were too but a lot of their plans were shelved because of the exigencies of the war.

I won’t even bother going into the difference in having the US dollar become the world trade and reserve currency.

I think you confuse our nation having squandered one of the greatest and most important victories in all of history with the war itself having been … I don’t know how you want to put it, exactly … “bad”, “useless”, “counter-productive” … That is just silly.

Of course, no one can know what would have happened had we blown off Pearl Harbor and just stayed out (as you seem to think was best), or if we had just let Britain get run over by Germany even without Pearl Harbor, but most people can see that it would not have been particularly pleasant or good for America.

As to your question about the Germans and Japanese becoming “good” … well, I don’t think that feeling started right after the war (and I still have problems with both of their cultures) but they became strong and trustworthy allies for a very long time. That’s what tends to happen when you really beat the living snot out of someone and show them that you would not hesitate to take it to the very limit.

After WWII, though, we declared that type of fighting and all the successful tactics that we used in WWII to be “illegal”. That shouldn’t be any great surprise. We had a tendency to do stupid things like that after a tremendously traumatic experience, as when we called WWI “the war to end all wars” after it was over, when only the dimmest people on Earth could ever think that wars would ever end. But, that’s hwo people do things … like pledging never to drink again while you’re puking your guts out. Right …

In any event, WWII was most definitely a good and important war for us to fight, as were others, and we benefited greatly (as did the entire world) from our prosecution of it with ruthless determination.

In any event, WWII was most definitely a good and important war for us to fight, as were others, and we benefited greatly (as did the entire world) from our prosecution of it with ruthless determination.

ThePrimordialOrderedPair on September 7, 2013 at 2:47 AM

Contra the negative counter-factuals you posited, do you think the US should have gotten in sooner? Not as far back as Chamberlain’s fiasco, but maybe after Dunkirk?

Probably. We got lucky that Britain was able to hang on until we did go in full-force.

ThePrimordialOrderedPair on September 7, 2013 at 3:29 AM

IIRC one reason we held back was that Hitler and Stalin were allies in the beginning (or at least had a non-interference pact), and FDR’s Communist advisors kept him from supporting Britain more aggressively.

from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The launch, which occured at 11:27 pm EDT, was widely visible along the US east coast from Maine to the Carolinas. Ben Cooper on took this picture of the rocket flying over the Empire State Building in New York:

“As seen from the Top of Rockefeller Center, LADEE launches to the moon aboard Orbital Sciences Minotaur V rocket,” says Cooper. “[It soared] over the blue-and-green Empire State Building, lit for the US Open of tennis.”

The launch kicks off LADEE’s mission to investigate the Moon’s atmosphere. Yes, the “airless Moon” has an atmosphere. It is ten thousand billion times thinner than Earth’s, but nevertheless there. Apollo astronauts actually saw it with their own eyes.

LADEE, short for “Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer,” will circle the Moon for 100 days to assay the lunar atmosphere. Instruments onboard the spacecraft will look for signs of humidity, electrified dust, and atoms hopping across the lunar surface. A NASA video about LADEE previews the mission.

Well if you want to stop the spread of CWs there are the signatory Nations of the Chemical Weapons Convention treaty that Obama could go to FIRST.

Talk with them about sanctions: seizing Syrian assets, freezing Syrian accounts, cutting off trade with Syria and then maybe even looking for a multinational embargo with Syria to cut off all its ties to the outside world.

Why go to war as a first step when this hasn’t been tried?

Syria isn’t threatening the US.

Nor is it threatening our allies: Israel has lived with a Syrian threat for decades and know how to fly over Syrian airspace with impunity. I can’t see a victorious Assad regime suddenly showing competence… look at how they have handled everything else. This civil war doesn’t reek of competence on high in Syria.

And what if this is just part of the ongoing, multi-century of that geographic region to adjust to changing demographics? Then trying to figure out WHAT should happen without regard to WHO actually lives there is asinine, at best, and destructive of lives at worse.

Warfare sits around option #3 for me, and that is after you have tried to be friends with a Nation or asked them to leave you alone. Yeah, we can’t be friends with Syria, but I can’t say they are directly threatening the US, either, so they appear to be abiding by option #2. Is it a horrific regime? Yup. No guarantee the rebels will be any better and, if Egypt is a clue on this, they can be far worse than what is there now.

So how about diplomacy? Warfare by other means and all that. Choke the place off if it disgusts you so much… but that does mean you are civilized and put warfare at option #3.

As Hadley and others have noted, Obama has screwed up repeatedly in the Middle East, and his Syrian policies have been no exception. He squandered the chance to support a secular opposition until the influx of jihadis from around the region and even the world made it impossible.

But we are here. How we got to this point is fit discussion, but in the sense of history: that we blundered into this position is no excuse for not doing what needs to be done.

Assad needs to feel the pain in a very evident way, if only to discourage other potential deployers of WMDs.

Do we have an completely unqualified embarrassment in the White House? Yes, sir! But we still need to do the right thing insofar as we are able to do it.

As I said before, if we are dangerously uncertain of the outcome and are led into war by a Commander-in-chief who can’t recognize that this conflict is pitting Islamic extremists against an authoritarian regime with both sides shouting “Allah Akbar” at each other, then let Allah sort it out.

Liberal are hypocrites. War is now is style and American treasure and American blood is just peachy to put on the line line for another countries civil war that we have no business sticking our nose into. They did not attack us and there isn’t a single UN resolution to enforce. There is less certain evidence that Syria had/used chemical nerve agents at the present time than there was for Saddam Hussein and yet, the liberal can get behind this where before, they sought to tear America in half over Iraq. Where are the peace marches from the left? Where is the antiwar movement? Its not there and not necessary because the truth is that those people who protested Iraq and Afghanistan were never antiwar. They were leftists and outright communist/Marxists who were against the US winning wars.

The Conservatives in Australia have won the national elections, and are going to form the new Govt. Congratulations to the new Conservative Prime Minister, Tony Abbott.

tommy71 on September 7, 2013 at 5:36 AM

Great stuff! Actually it’s the Liberals that have won in Australia. Down there they kept the true definition of the word, rather than using it as a euphemism for socialism…

Anyway the Liberal/National coalition is expected to have about 91 seats, 55 for Labor, 1 Green, 3 Independents. Rudd himself, the current PM, only barely hung on to his own seat in Griffith, so that will almost certainly go Liberal in a by-election in a couple of months. Overall it’s a fairly decent win as far as Australia is concerned, almost like 1996. The Senate could still be difficult. Latest prediction there was that the balance of power would be held with a couple of minor party Senators, so getting some real reform might have to involve stroking the ego of an Australian Lieberman a bit…

Also in overseas elections, Moscow will be voting for mayor tomorrow/tonight. That’s notable to watch as it has put the opposition movement front and center. Most expect United Russia’s Sobyanin to bring home about 65% of the vote to Navalny’s 20%, but the true question will be how much election fraud will be necessary to get that desired outcome for Putin. Too blatant and protestors will be sure to fill the streets yet again.

Are there secular democrats in Syria? Of course there are. Just as in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East, however, they are severely undermanned. The contention that there is a strong alternative force within the opposition — rebel factions that oppose Assad, and that not only oppose the Qaeda/Brotherhood factions but are capable of winning without them and then running the country despite them — is a pipedream.

The “rebels” know this even if Washington won’t come to grips with it. Colonel Fatih Hasun is General Salim Idriss’s deputy in the Free Syrian Army (FSA) — the assortment of purportedly moderate militias Senator McCain and the Obama administration claim it is in America’s interest to support. On August 22, Colonel Hasun announced that most of the senior commanders were threatening to resign from the FSA’s supreme military council because they reject two Western “red lines”: the demands that they (a) cease collaboration with al-Qaeda and (b) refrain from seizing Assad’s chemical-weapons sites. The FSA has no problem working with terrorists. Ideologically, many of its members have more in common with jihadists than they do with the West; more significantly, they know they cannot win without the jihadists.Moreover, there’s the dirty little secret about chemical weapons: The rebels not only want them, they have them and they quite likely have used them, both in Syria and elsewhere. Al-Qaeda has been seeking to procure and use chemical weapons for over 20 years — and unlike Assad, al-Qaeda affiliates are quite likely to use them against the United States and Israel if they have the chance.
Now, I have a confession to make: I am unimpressed by the Western obsession over chemical weapons. They are ghastly, yes. But so, in the wrong hands, are bombs and jumbo jets and hollow-point bullets. To me, the shrieking over weapons of mass destruction is the international version of the Left’s domestic campaign against guns, and of a piece with its trendy revulsion against land- and sea-mines. This is the delusion that discord is caused by the song, not the singer. It is a cop-out: the pretense that there is a valid excuse for failing to grapple with the players and the ideologies that resort to violence — as if we live in a make-believe world where destructive weapons in the right hands are unnecessary to keep us safe; and where laws, conventions, and purported “norms” against various types of weapons are effective against rogues like Assad and al-Qaeda.

In any event, despite the repugnancy of gas warfare, today it is not equivalent to a weapon of mass destruction, nowhere near the equivalent of a nuclear attack, and definitely not a valid reason to launch even limited aggression against Syria, particularly with America serving as mercenaries for Arab potentates and our military acting as al-qaeda’s air force.